By James Breedlove
There are less than two weeks remaining before the presidential elections. The media hype, polling prognostications, and campaign rhetoric appears to be exponentially increasing as the time to Nov. 6 decreases.
Who will be the next president of the United States is not only the question of the hour, but staunch Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama supporters eagerly project their candidate as the ultimate victor.
Most national polls indicate the race as statistically even. Still, heightened attention and expectations are being placed on the third and final presidential debate. All viewers will be waiting for some seismic interchange or an inadvertent gaffe that will determine the next president?
While there is a chance that this will be the case historical evidence indicates that presidential debates do not have a significant impact on final presidential results.
To appreciate this it is important to understand the mechanics of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the Electoral College.
Prior to 1988 the League of Women Voters moderated the 1976, 1980, 1984 presidential debates. The League withdrew its sponsorship of the debates after the George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns secretly agreed to a “memorandum of understanding” that determined which candidates could participate, the panelists, the audience and abolished follow up questions. The League released a statement saying that they were withdrawing support for the debates because “the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter.”
To fill this void the leadership of the two major political parties formed a corporation–The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) – to establish the manner in which presidential election debates are run. The Commission is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation under Federal US tax laws, whose debates are sponsored by private contributions from foundations and corporations. The organization, controlled exclusively by the Democratic and Republican parties, has run each of the presidential debates held since 1988.
For the majority of elections held since the CPD has been in existence the debates have occurred approximately a month prior to the elections. At this late date the candidates have campaigned for over a year and there aren’t many undecided voters left to persuade. Debate audiences are mostly supporters of the candidates who are an integral part of the well-orchestrated media show and are eager to participate in post- debate polls to enhance their candidate’s electability.
To qualify for a debate, a candidate has to have a statistically feasible chance of being able to win a majority of the votes available in the Electoral College. The candidate also must have at least 15 percent of voters’ support in polls before the debates begin.
Except for Thomas Dewey in 1948 no presidential contender who was leading in the polls six weeks before the election has lost the popular vote. There have been four cases where the popular vote winner has not been sworn in as president due to the peculiar anomaly known as the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is a controversial mechanism of presidential elections that was created by the framers of the U.S Constitution as a compromise for selecting a president by majority vote. At that time, some politicians believed it was too risky to let the people directly elect a president, while others objected to giving Congress the power to select the president. The compromise was to set up a system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for the candidates. This system is described in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution.
Each state has a number of electors equal to the number of its senators plus the number of its representatives. Currently, the Electoral College includes 538 electors, 535 for the total number of congressional members, and three who represent Washington, D.C.
On the Monday following the second Wednesday in December, the electors of each state meet in their respective state capitals to officially cast their votes for president and vice president. These votes are then sealed and sent to the president of the Senate, who on January 6th opens and reads the votes in the presence of both houses of Congress. The electoral winner is sworn into office at noon on January 20th.
Most of the time, electors cast their votes for the candidate who has received the most votes in their particular state. Some states have laws that require electors to vote for the candidate that won the popular vote, while other electors are bound by pledges to a specific political party. However, there have been times when electors have voted contrary to the people’s decision, and there is no federal law to prevent this.
If a voter supports the re-election of President Obama and lives in a state such as Texas, Arizona or Indiana (confirmed Red States) that is overwhelmingly pre-disposed to Romney then his vote for the president will have no direct impact. His state’s Electoral College votes will be cast for Romney.
In similar fashion if a voter supports the election of Mitt Romney and lives in a state pre-disposed to Obama such as California, New York or Illinois (confirmed Blue States) then his vote for Romney will be negated because the Electoral College votes of his state will be cast for President Obama.
However, if the voter lives in one of the marginal states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida or Colorado that have not been conclusively aligned with a candidate then a vote for the candidate of choice becomes critical in determining how the state will vote in the Electoral College.
For those voters that live in states in which your preferred candidate does not win a majority of the votes do not despair because your candidate may still become president by decision of the Electoral College. If this happens then each vote becomes more valuable if it aided in getting the chosen president a congressional majority. We have all witnessed during the past four years the obstruction a president faces if the congressional majority consists of uncompromising opposition loyalists.
The pundits will be working overtime analyzing and interpreting the third debate. While Romney may be advancing in the national polls President Obama has a good chance of becoming the fifth person sworn in as president without winning the popular vote.
James W. Breedlove is the author of Let’s Call Them Nigger and Other Controversial Commentary on Black America. Comments or opinions may be sent to the writer at: jaydubub@swbell.net.
nice read, i’m really glad you addressed the electoral college which imo needs to be completely abolished. i haven’t watched the presidential so called debates this year for one of the very reasons which you pointed out. it is quite clear the political process in amerikkka is far from democratic. people are given the illusion of having a voice.